I know some will disagree but having my ATI X800XL die on me I was forced to go with another card. I ended up building a new machine and at the time it made sense to go C2 Duo and SLI. I opted to go SLI just because I can't stand the fact we get new cards every 6 months and I thought it would be a good option just to go with another older card and scale that way.
Anyways...
I switch to 1 8800 GT and I continue to run water=2 and special effects=2 and the ATI cards water looks way better. Everything else looked very close and the IQ on both cards was about the same. But with the 8800GT I could bump up the AA and AF over all it looked better and I got about the same amount of performance over all. I didn't run any AA and only little AF with the ATI.
I then wanted to see this sim but not kill myself by getting a 600 card so I bought another 8800GT and went SLI.
After about a month of tweaking and playing with the lame drivers I got dialed in. I have no studder anymore and I run with full settings.
So at the end of the day you can opt to go Nvidia and be fine and your card choices seem good to me. You may opt to go with the 260 just to get a little longevity and it's not that much more expensive.
The 4870 seems like a good choice too...
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